Designing a Place Called Home: Reordering the Suburbs

Author: James Wentling Year: 2017 (Second Edition; first edition 1994, © Springer International Publishing AG 1994, 2017; Library of Congress Control Number 2016959580) Source type: book (full book) Raw file: raw/books/wentling-2017-designing-a-place-called-home.md

Edition note: This is the second edition of a book first published in 1994. Wentling's Introduction to the Second Edition is itself a time-document: it opens by rebutting the post-Great-Recession predictions of suburbia's demise (The End of the Suburbs genre, "a nation of renters"), and reports 20 further years of practice — sustainability, form-based zoning and the New Urbanism's institutionalization have "gained traction," while affordability has collapsed and "the majority of new communities are still built as single-use, detached houses isolated from quality open space and community amenities" (pp. 5–6). Page numbers below cite the raw file's  markers (PDF pagination); printed book pages run ≈15 behind (book p. 1 = marker p. 16).

Summary

A Philadelphia housing architect's practitioner-theory of the American suburb: the suburb is not dead ("Rest assured, the suburbs are not dead, and the detached house continues to be the most popular choice for most Americans," p. 5) but badly designed — and its failures are traceable, chapter by chapter, to identifiable causes: postwar cost-cutting, Euclidean separation of uses, square-footage appraisal, the garage's forward march, and interiors valued over exteriors. The book's programme is a reordering — "organized from the old to the new, from the large to the small, and from the general to the specific" (p. 10) — that recovers prewar settlement patterns (mixed-use, mixed-density, pedestrian-oriented, moderate-density, 4–8 units/acre) and re-applies them at market cost, from the region (community planning) down to the entry stoop (interior details). It is the design-practice end of the wiki's Suburbanism cluster: where Dovey theorizes place identity as power, Cochrane/Keil/Røe theorize suburbanism's politics, Wentling supplies the how — the concrete instruments (setbacks, product lines, alleys, eyebrow streets, nooks, half-rooms, missing middle types) by which a place called home could be reordered.

Key Claims

The suburb's persistence against its obituarists. Post-crash predictions that "suburban housing is no longer in demand" were wrong: at the market peak over 80% of housing starts were single-family detached, still about two-thirds after the crash; detached homes are over 80% of owned stock and "the latest community survey by the Census Department indicates that that segment is not declining, but rather growing"; attached townhouses and condos are "only 10% of owned housing"; renting youth "still aspires to eventually own a detached home, though preferably in a walkable neighborhood" (p. 5).
Scope discipline as method: the book deliberately studies "the 'plain vanilla,' the most common and numerous types of housing and communities underway throughout the country" — densities of 4–8 units/acre, garden buildings to three stories, privately built, affordable at median household income — explicitly excluding elevator buildings and below-median-income housing (pp. 6–7).
The house/home distinction as the book's charter (epigraph from Aladdin's 1919 Catalog of Readi-Cut Homes): "A house is a structure to live in. Home—the dearest place on earth—is that structure that is a part of you… It is a refuge from the trials and struggles of the outer world. It is a visible expression of yourself, your tastes and character" (p. 11). The title's "place called home" is thus not sentiment but a design programme: the suburb must be designed to deliver home, not merely house.
Four historical constants of American housing: diverse regional character (no national style, "a tapestry of regionally diverse architecture," p. 17); freestanding dwellings (83% of stock single-unit, 90% detached with manufactured homes, p. 18); traditional imported styles; moderate density (pp. 16–18, restated p. 32).
The democratic-housing thesis: because America "settled by people seeking religious freedom and land reform, wanted the opportunity to own property… our abundant land and skilled carpenters gradually fashioned a democratic type of housing stock—housing which was more responsive to how people wanted to live, as opposed to what a central government decided was needed" (p. 18) — the private-builder alternative to the government-sponsored multifamily norm of other developed nations. The preference is claimed as species-level: "there is evidence that the preference for ground level, independent dwellings is a universal human behavior" (p. 18, citing Turner's Housing by People).
Jeffersonian origins: the low-density Arcadia of freeholders (Mount Vernon, Monticello, the family farm and village) "represented the American Dream to own land—land upon which a home could be sited. This ideal vision of the home is undeniably part of the market forces shaping the planning and design of new home communities today" (pp. 20–21).
Pattern books made housing fashion, and separated beauty from function. Downing's Victorian Cottage Residences (1842) brought "housing design… into a world similar to fashion" (p. 22); the Romantic era's decisive precedent: "beauty was separated from function" — a basic plan dressed by applied ornament — which "established a precedent for architectural diversity within residential communities" (p. 23). Sears mail-order houses (1908–1940, ~100,000 homes, ~450 designs) let styles "travel freely throughout the country" (p. 28).
Prewar suburb genealogy: railroad suburbs (Chestnut Hill 1854; Olmsted & Vaux's Riverside, 1869 — 1,600 acres with 700 in common open space, mixed-use, mixed-density village pattern "the rule… until the postwar era," pp. 24–26); trolley suburbs (Forest Hills Gardens 1909, Shaker Heights, Roland Park); automobile suburbs culminating in J.C. Nichols's Country Club District (4,000 acres, 6,000 homes; curving streets fitting contours, triangular planted parks, homes associations "to maintain neighborhood morale," p. 30).
The postwar break: the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 (42,500 miles) "spark[ed] the decentralization of cities" (p. 31); "Postwar communities and individual houses had, however, gradually been designed more in response to the automobile and less toward human and social concerns" (p. 32). Levittown (17,447 houses by 1951; 700 sq ft on 60×100 ft lots at $7,990; 1,400 contracts on opening day) doubled homeownership "from the mid 30% to the mid 60% range" — though "Levitt originally refused to sell houses to black buyers" (pp. 31–32, 35).
The cost machinery of bad design: appraisal by square footage ("real estate appraisers often dictated the valuation of homes, and did so primarily based on square footage, not by material use or design quality," p. 36); 1938 VA/FHA minimum standards "did not address community design or exterior design features" (p. 36); zoning "driven up the cost of new homes by as much as 24%" with boards captured by property-value defenders (p. 37); inclusionary zoning "drives up the cost of the remaining units" (p. 38); and the land-cost flow-through — lots held to 20–25% of sales price means "if the price of a lot escalated by $5000, the overall home would need to go up by about $20,000" (p. 38).
Density didn't buy affordability: the zero-lot-line/Z-lot/wide-and-shallow/zipper-lot wave "did little to help with the affordability problem, while introducing even lower standards for unit and community design"; "increased density benefits only the obtainer of those rights" (pp. 39–40, 95).
Buyers take what they can get. Against the dogma "if a product sells, then it is a good product": "do people buy houses with poor or mediocre design because they like them, or because it's all they can get? To me, the latter is more likely to be true—buyers need to take what they can get in the housing market" (p. 45) — with price, familiarity, comparables, and construction quality as the four constraints (p. 45). Focus groups at McConnell at Davidson showed buyers actively preferring turn-of-century styles to tract models (pp. 45–46).
The interior turn. Citing Putnam's Bowling Alone, households "internaliz[ed] themselves within the household structure—much to the detriment of the 'social capital' of the community" (p. 40). At Irvine Ranch, buyers "had no expectation of owning a home that looked any different from the others around them," so "the only means for them to establish a sense of homeowner identity would be inside the home. Thus, today's new houses are sold from the inside" (p. 40).
Change comes slowly, and innovation is structural: conservative risk-averse builders; medium-sized firms innovate; "once an innovative project is proven successful, however, there is often an incentive to emulate" (p. 43). Yet "America's housing delivery system is the envy of the free world: statistically and technically, we are the best-housed nation on earth" — while "the lower economic strata… remain ill housed" and "Our new communities are still economically and racially segregated and wasteful in their energy consumption" (p. 55).
Six return-principles of community design (mixed-income/mixed-density housing; pedestrian-oriented streets; higher density with quality open space; mass-transit links; residential–commercial integration; environmentally responsible design) — "these planning principles… should not be viewed as a trend, but rather as a return to acknowledged community planning goals that have been practiced for centuries, and as recently as the 1950s" (p. 58).
Segregation of uses as the root doctrine: Euclid v. Ambler (1926) validated "the complete segregation of residential land from commercial and/or industrial uses," "carried to absurd conclusions—which is why in most of our suburban communities it is impossible to buy a loaf of bread without getting into a car and driving for 15 min to get to a store" (p. 59). The MPC recipe — "spread a piece of paper over a site survey. Start drawing circles" of segregated housing types (p. 59) — contradicts the integrated variety of traditional towns (p. 60).
Streets: prewar residential streets ~20 ft vs new 36 ft+; "Excessively wide streets destroy the sense of human scale in residential communities," raise impervious area and speed (p. 64); cul-de-sacs "tend to form isolated pockets of houses connected to the larger neighborhood via a high-speed collector road" and "create small 'territorials'" (pp. 66–67); the sidewalk is "both a utilitarian route around the neighborhood as well as a promenade… part of a public/private transition zone in front of the house where socialization is more likely to occur" (p. 68).
Open space law: "a prime by-product of higher density housing must be higher quality open space" (p. 73); New England commons get mowed through "informal neighborhood cooperative efforts" without homeowner associations (p. 73); Nash's Regent's Park crescent as the distributive model (p. 73).
Architectural controls vs variation: "the more architectural controls dictate a particular style, the more they result in mundane environments" (p. 73); Irvine, The Woodlands and Reston adopted "contemporary design as the controlling motif"; European new towns show "controlled design dogma at its worst" (p. 73); the practical alternative is the builder's product line — 3–5 compatible models, 4–8 with alternate façades (p. 75).
Edges: "People like to live on the edge… people like the excitement of contrast" — the design exploitation of edge-condition open space (farmland, forest, golf fairway) at Wheatstone and Farmview (farmland deeded "in perpetuity to a conservation trust," p. 76–77).
Sense of place, defined practically: "the real goal is to create a sense of place, a feeling that people can connect to and belong to the physical environment that forms the community" (p. 77); Gertrude Stein's Oakland verdict — "there is no there there" — "could apply to most of our new communities as well" (p. 78); place = physical environment + people; design must balance "the needs for public and private space, diversity within a coherent setting, and human scale in a machine age" (p. 78).
The garage saga as the master narrative of streetscape decline: garage moved from detached rear structure → attached rear → side → front; "the average space required for a single car—say 240 sq. ft—is about double the size of an average secondary bedroom," and "the average homeowner pays more to house his or her automobile than they do to house their children. That is correct" (p. 88); with the garage pulled forward and the entry pushed back, "This is a prime reason for why our streetscapes look so bad!" (p. 89). Full mitigation apparatus: recessed/turned/tandem/rear/alley/lower-level garages, garage courts, room-over-garage, one-and-a-half-car garages (pp. 89–97).
The front/rear reversal as social diagnosis: "In effect, we have seen most of the design emphasis turn away from the front and side of houses… There certainly could be some social commentary here, in that housing designs seem to be acknowledging that people are becoming more antisocial, private, and internalized. One may look to the famous quote about architecture from Sir Winston Churchill: 'we shape our dwellings, then afterward our dwellings shape us'" (p. 83).
Entries and thresholds: the entry "symbolizes the warmth and hospitality found inside the home" — even an affordable house needs a 5×4 ft stoop, a usable porch of 6–8×10–12 ft (pp. 84–86); the back door or "friend's entrance" was lost to the attached garage and should be reincorporated (pp. 87–88).
Western small-lot pathology: "the overriding problem is basic: the lots are too small for the size of house being built on them" (p. 95); against Kendig's Performance Zoning FAR standards (0.33 patio homes, 0.48 atrium homes — c. 1,500 sq ft on a 3,000 sq ft lot), "The existing small-lot house designs that are considered the norm in Western states effectively double Kendig's recommended housing size standards" (p. 95); the honest answer to "Is there a solution?" is "No" — only the choice between density and elitist enclaves (p. 95).
Plan theory at room scale: all plans are box-like or articulated; spans govern (roof 24–36 ft; plan depth ≈ twice room width + hall, pp. 123–126); rhythm and modules; "generally, the more modulation in a façade, the more it can relate to human scale" (p. 115); complexity encodes "perceived value" while "Simplicity… can be a good design ally of the smaller and lower priced houses" (p. 131); "Interior room locations should actually be governed by whatever is outside the room" (p. 136); people prefer "circular circulation" — two routes through the house (p. 132); plans succeed by "the degree to which design has successfully anticipated how most people want to live in the plan" — testable by furnishing rooms on paper (p. 146).
The kitchen's apotheosis: "In new production houses, however, the kitchen is universally acknowledged to be the most important room in the home" (p. 155); the American country kitchen as ancestor of the eat-in kitchen and the kitchen/breakfast/family great room (p. 155); the island as "a podium on a stage from which people can communicate" (p. 155); "The country kitchen is very much the social and nerve center of an operating household" (p. 155).
Room-size heresy: "I continue to believe many rooms in a typical house are too big, and that smaller sizes may actually benefit the design's emotional qualities" (p. 151) — with half-rooms (lofts, alcoves, window seats, "secret rooms") as the semiprivate connective tissue (pp. 151–152); flexibility for the household life-cycle (nursery→office→in-law suite, p. 152); universal design / "age in place" (p. 149).
Details as technology mitigation and layering: the fireplace survives "over 150 years after their utilitarian purpose was eliminated by centralized heating sources, as a testament to its sentimental and emotional value" (p. 162); the flat-screen TV is "the contemporary electronic hearth. Most household gatherings take place in front of a media screen, not the fireplace" (p. 164); snap-in muntins are "an excellent illustration of the high-tech/high touch phenomenon, where manufacturers responded to the public's interest in technology mitigation" (p. 194); nonfunctional shutters defended — "almost every culture since antiquity has included some form of decoration on their architecture… I see window shutters as a legitimate form of decoration… the fact that they are simply decorative is of no consequence" (p. 182). "The application of interior details is a process that the homebuilder may start, but that the occupant must finish" — the "layering of details over time" is why "many older houses are viewed as having more charm" (p. 176).
The exterior's institutional neglect: "a typical directive at the completion of a floor plan is, 'OK, let's slap some curb appeal on that'" and builders' "do something nice on the outside but don't spend any money" — "The general response to this directive? Mission Impossible" (p. 178); truss roofs yield "a mundane cigar box with a shallow roof pitch" (p. 181); "In roof pitches, height generally connotes value, prestige, and quality" (p. 183).
Multifamily's two roles and its suburban failure: lifestyle housing vs affordable housing (p. 188); "when you take historical urban models such as row homes and garden apartments out to the country, they look like fish out of water" — "the problem with multifamily in suburbia is" the missing urban experience (p. 189); "Without those amenities, higher density housing becomes something that people will live in because it's the only thing they can afford… Most commonly, they would rather have the American dream—a freestanding detached home with a yard" (p. 199); the alien landing test — "'I don't get it. Why are these people living so close together? I don't see anything so special about this place!'" (p. 198).
Multifamily design principles: "The threshold design issue to address in designing multifamily housing is the address" (p. 201); "less is more" — walk-ups over elevator buildings, duplexes over townhouses, fewer units per building: "It keeps people close to the ground" (p. 203); through flats over back-to-back; the manor-house counter-approach (pp. 203–205); garages tacked onto row homes "look ridiculous" (p. 209); private outdoor space needs distance, walls, staggered decks (pp. 210–211); buffer/environmental/usable-distributed open space with Bentley Ridge's ~50-home "villages" (pp. 212–214).
Manufactured housing's paradox: factory control beats site-built quality and costs ~50% less per square foot, yet shipments fell from ~575,000 (mid-1970s, c. 25% of starts) to ~64,000 (~9%) — stigma, 4/12 trailer roofs, random fenestration, box plans; design fixes exist (hinged roofs, site-built porches, Fries Mill, Schoolhouse Square, LivingHomes) and Berkshire Hathaway's buying spree signals modular's mainstream arrival (pp. 220–226).
Sustainability at production scale: two goals (occupancy consumption vs construction impact); buyers pay only for utility savings ("consumers are in favor of protecting the environment through green building practices when they would only incur minimal additional costs," p. 228); the programs ladder (IECC → Energy Star → HERS → LEED for Homes/LEED-ND → NGBS → Passive House ≈ 90% reduction → ZERH); "By simply cutting down on interior square footage, many of the goals of building sustainable communities can be achieved" — 1950: <1,000 sq ft homes for 3.37-person households vs 2010: 2,392 sq ft for 2.59 (pp. 242–243); location belongs in the rating: "a 1500 sq. ft house on a quarter acre lot near public transportation and services is going to be greener, in terms of lifecycle impact, than a 5000 sq. ft house in a remote, large lot location" (p. 234).
The suburb's sustainability defense and the walk-up datum: "For every opinion piece or research paper that argues against suburban living, there are others that state the exact opposite"; cities have their own emissions, shading and equality deficits — NYC "the greenest" yet "the most unequal"; urban construction costs ~3× suburban; and the killer comparison: a three-story walk-up neighborhood at 27.8 units/acre (Longview, WA) ≈ Charlestown, MA high-rise fabric at 26.7 units/acre (pp. 243–245).
The convergence thesis (Conclusion): "some redeveloped areas of cities are becoming less dense, while many new suburban communities are becoming more dense"; market researchers dub the result "'new urban-lite,' which attempts to provide some of the diversity and vitality found in urban areas while retaining some of the privacy and open space that suburban communities typically offer. In a sense, there seems to be a universal interest in moderate density living" (p. 251); affordability is the shared crisis — suburban lot delivery now 25% of house cost, approvals and impact fees "driven up the cost of delivering a new home in suburban settings to beyond the reach of entry-level buyers" (p. 252); the Missing Middle programme (Dan Parolek/Opticos) would legalize "duplexes, triplexes, courtyard buildings, townhouses, and three-story apartments of wood frame construction" plus accessory units to "bridge the gap between single family and mid-rise elevator buildings" (p. 252); and the ontological coda: "By definition, a suburb cannot exist without a city that it grew from" (p. 253).

Connections

Concepts: suburbanism (the design-practice register of Cluster H), home-ownership-democracy (the democratic housing stock; Levittown), separation-of-uses (Euclid v. Ambler critique), new-urbanism (TND/TOD genealogy, Seaside, Harbor Town, Laguna West, CNU), missing-middle-housing (Parolek's programme, endorsed in the Conclusion), neighbourhood-character (controls vs variation; pattern books; product lines), place-identity (sense of place; "there is no there there"; address vs anonymous), real-existing-suburbia (the plain-vanilla audit of what is actually built), post-suburban-densification and post-suburbia (the convergence thesis; "new urban-lite"), social-capital (Putnam; homes associations; porches/sidewalks), micro-places (commons, greens, eyebrow streets, territorials), suburban-governance (the zoning game; HOAs; private streets), nimbyism (boards captured by property-value defense; edge protection), urban-sprawl (diagnosis and reform programme), housing (cost machinery: land flow-through, zoning +24%, urban 3×), home and dwelling (house/home distinction; refuge; Churchill's shaping), typology (box vs articulated; five-zone component method; prototypes; manufactured; walk-ups), domestic-interior (interiors sold first; kitchen; electronic hearth; layering), kitchen (country kitchen; island as podium), flexible-interior (flex space; life-cycle plans; universal design), prefab-interior (manufactured housing register), automobile-vernacular and architectural-purgatory (the garage saga; the car's 240 sq ft), advice-literature (Downing's pattern books; Sears mail-order; stock plans), design-reform (New Urbanism as a reform movement), privacy (rear-yard privatization; privacy walls; fences), inhabitant-and-visitor (front/back door; "back door guests"), identity-of-the-interior (identity inside when the exterior is standardized), user-participation (a la carte options; layering; accessory structures as user territory), habitus (familiarity and comparables as taste constraints; housing as fashion), everyday-architecture (the anti-iconic subject: production housing), welfare-state-housing (the US private-market contrast), towers-in-the-park (parking-lot-ring critique; walk-up density datum), architectural-determinism (Churchill's dictum), cul-de-sac (territorials debate), porch (front porch as icon and social device), technology-mitigation (fireplaces, muntins, craftsman image).

Authors: wentling-james — the source's author; practitioners and figures cited (not paged, see log): Frederick Law Olmsted (& Vaux), J.C. Nichols, William Levitt, Duany & Plater-Zyberk, Peter Calthorpe, Christopher Alexander, A.J. Downing, Robert Putnam, Sarah Susanka, Lane Kendig, Dan Parolek, Ross Chapin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Joseph Eichler, Barry Berkus.

Debates: form-vs-program ("beauty was separated from function"; traditional exteriors/contemporary interiors; façadisms), dwelling-vs-housing (the Aladdin house/home epigraph as the book's charter), tradition-vs-innovation (change-comes-slowly; traditional styles vs modernism; ICAA counterweight).

Themes: vernacular-architecture (traditional styles as the market's constant; regional diversity).

Direct Quotes

"Did you ever really consider the wonderful difference in the meaning of the words house and home? A house is a structure to live in. Home—the dearest place on earth—is that structure that is a part of you—made so by its association with your family, their joys and sorrows, their hopes, aspirations and fears. It is a refuge from the trials and struggles of the outer world. It is a visible expression of yourself, your tastes and character." (p. 11 — Aladdin's 1919 Catalog of Readi-Cut Homes, epigraph)

"Rest assured, the suburbs are not dead, and the detached house continues to be the most popular choice for most Americans." (p. 5)

"In time, our abundant land and skilled carpenters gradually fashioned a democratic type of housing stock—housing which was more responsive to how people wanted to live, as opposed to what a central government decided was needed." (p. 18)

"In fact, there is evidence that the preference for ground level, independent dwellings is a universal human behavior." (p. 18)

"Front porches would later become a stylistic icon of American housing throughout the country, symbolizing hospitality and connection to the greater neighborhood." (p. 19)

"Through the use of pattern books, housing design was brought into a world similar to fashion, where homebuyers had several options to choose from—and selecting the most appropriate look for one's home was a major decision." (p. 22)

"Beginning with the Romantic homes, beauty was separated from function." (p. 23)

"By allowing different styles to travel freely throughout the country, within a neighborhood, and along a street, the Romantic homes of early industrial America established a precedent for architectural diversity within residential communities." (p. 23)

"Proponents of the craftsman style felt that if we must live in a machine age, houses should present an image of craftsmanship and the art of building by hand." (p. 27)

"Postwar communities and individual houses had, however, gradually been designed more in response to the automobile and less toward human and social concerns." (p. 32)

"Overzealous control over land use and construction standards by local, state, and federal government agencies is well documented and acknowledged to have driven up the cost of new homes by as much as 24 %." (p. 37)

"In other words, if the price of a lot escalated by $5000, the overall home would need to go up by about $20,000." (p. 38)

"This doctrine [separation of uses] was carried to absurd conclusions—which is why in most of our suburban communities it is impossible to buy a loaf of bread without getting into a car and driving for 15 min to get to a store." (p. 59)

"Too often an MPC would be conceptualized as follows: spread a piece of paper over a site survey. Start drawing circles. Label those circles with different housing types—large homes, small homes, townhomes, apartments." (p. 59)

"America's housing delivery system is the envy of the free world: statistically and technically, we are the best-housed nation on earth, and yet there is more to be done. The lower economic strata of our society remain ill housed, particularly in comparison to other industrial nations. Our new communities are still economically and racially segregated and wasteful in their energy consumption." (p. 55)

"People are increasingly pulling away from group activities, such as block parties and neighborhood picnics, and internalizing themselves within the household structure—much to the detriment of the 'social capital' of the community." (p. 40)

"Thus, today's new houses are sold from the inside." (p. 40)

"do people buy houses with poor or mediocre design because they like them, or because it's all they can get? To me, the latter is more likely to be true—buyers need to take what they can get in the housing market" (p. 45)

"In many cases, these planning principles are described in journals as neo-traditionalism; however, the goals stated above should not be viewed as a trend, but rather as a return to acknowledged community planning goals that have been practiced for centuries, and as recently as the 1950s." (p. 58)

"Excessively wide streets destroy the sense of human scale in residential communities." (p. 64)

"Cul-de-sacs tend to form isolated pockets of houses connected to the larger neighborhood via a high-speed collector road. Thus, the negatives of heavy traffic may not be right in front of your home, but right down the street." (p. 66)

"This creates small 'territorials.' Through streets, on the other hand, have continuity and connect to one another in a more comprehensive fabric, allowing more opportunities for social interaction." (p. 67)

"The sidewalk location along the street is both a utilitarian route around the neighborhood as well as a promenade. A sidewalk is part of a public/private transition zone in front of the house where socialization is more likely to occur." (p. 68)

"I cannot stress this enough: a prime by-product of higher density housing must be higher quality open space." (p. 73)

"While architectural controls can accomplish some positive objectives, they can just as easily result in a sterile environment. In general, the more architectural controls dictate a particular style, the more they result in mundane environments." (p. 73)

"People like to live on the edge. That doesn't necessarily mean they like high speeds and danger, but people like the excitement of contrast, of differences they find when traveling to a foreign country or seeing another culture." (p. 76)

"To summarize the planning and design objectives in developing new communities, one could say that the real goal is to create a sense of place, a feeling that people can connect to and belong to the physical environment that forms the community." (p. 77)

"The famous comment of Gertrude Stein about Oakland, California, 'there is no there there,' could apply to most of our new communities as well." (p. 78)

"Good community design addresses these issues and tries to strike a balance between the needs for public and private space, diversity within a coherent setting, and human scale in a machine age." (p. 78)

"There certainly could be some social commentary here, in that housing designs seem to be acknowledging that people are becoming more antisocial, private, and internalized. One may look to the famous quote about architecture from Sir Winston Churchill: 'we shape our dwellings, then afterward our dwellings shape us.'" (p. 83)

"The entry area should be gracious and inviting in appearance, for in spite of its infrequent use, it symbolizes the warmth and hospitality found inside the home." (p. 84)

"You may have heard the saying that the average homeowner pays more to house his or her automobile than they do to house their children. That is correct." (p. 88)

"With the garage pulled way out in front of the house, and the entrance pulled way back, the floor plan can minimize circulation and construction costs. And as discussed earlier, houses are merchandized to sell from the inside, so most often the exterior appearance of the house loses out to interior efficiency. This is a prime reason for why our streetscapes look so bad!" (p. 89)

"While each of the Western odd lot patterns has its positives and negatives, the overriding problem is basic: the lots are too small for the size of house being built on them." (p. 95)

"The existing small-lot house designs that are considered the norm in Western states effectively double Kendig's recommended housing size standards." (p. 95)

"Houses, unlike office buildings, stores or factories need to have virtually all major rooms on an outside wall with access to light and ventilation." (p. 125)

"Interior room locations should actually be governed by whatever is outside the room." (p. 136)

"I have found over the years that people have a strong preference for houses that have circular circulation, meaning that within a plan there are always two routes to get to another room—as opposed to 'dead-end' plans where there is only one way to move through a house." (p. 132)

"What makes one plan work and another not work is the degree to which design has successfully anticipated how most people want to live in the plan." (p. 146)

"Room sizes should correspond to specific market needs; but, I continue to believe many rooms in a typical house are too big, and that smaller sizes may actually benefit the design's emotional qualities." (p. 139)

"Fireplaces have been retained in homes over 150 years after their utilitarian purpose was eliminated by centralized heating sources, as a testament to its sentimental and emotional value." (p. 162)

"Further, let's recognize the awesome role of the flat-screen TV as the contemporary electronic hearth. Most household gatherings take place in front of a media screen, not the fireplace." (p. 164)

"There's a sense of togetherness that results from dining in close quarters." (p. 166)

"The application of interior details is a process that the homebuilder may start, but that the occupant must finish." (p. 165)

"This process may be thought of as 'layering' of details over time, and for this reason many older houses are viewed as having more charm." (p. 165)

"In reality, the floor plan is resolved first, and the exterior comes later—a typical directive at the completion of a floor plan is, 'OK, let's slap some curb appeal on that.'" (p. 178)

"I have often heard this directive from builders: 'do something nice on the outside but don't spend any money.' The general response to this directive? Mission Impossible." (p. 178)

"When placed over the walls of a home, the interior area of the truss becomes dead space, eliminating the possibility of attic or other usable rooms permitted by roof rafter construction… you can see the worst-case scenario for housing design—a mundane cigar box with a shallow roof pitch." (p. 181)

"In roof pitches, height generally connotes value, prestige, and quality." (p. 183)

"Almost every culture since antiquity has included some form of decoration on their architecture… I see window shutters as a legitimate form of decoration, along with some of the other nonfunctional elements seen on new homes; the fact that they are simply decorative is of no consequence." (p. 182)

"The popularity of 'fake' window muntins is another excellent illustration of the high-tech/high touch phenomenon, where manufacturers responded to the public's interest in technology mitigation." (p. 194)

"Perhaps a reason for the polarization of design lies in the two primary roles of multifamily housing. There are two types of multifamily products: lifestyle housing and affordable housing." (p. 188)

"Indeed, the problem with multifamily in suburbia is that when you take historical urban models such as row homes and garden apartments out to the country, they look like fish out of water." (p. 189)

"Without those amenities, higher density housing becomes something that people will live in because it's the only thing they can afford, when they would really prefer to live elsewhere. Most commonly, they would rather have the American dream—a freestanding detached home with a yard." (p. 199)

"The threshold design issue to address in designing multifamily housing is the address." (p. 201)

"If you don't need elevator buildings, use walk-ups. If you don't need walk-ups, use townhouses. If you don't need townhouses, use duplexes. Typically, a lower density prototype is best for promoting community design and livability. It keeps people close to the ground." (p. 203)

"I have always felt that an historical urban row home model with a garage tacked on in front looks ridiculous, but is among the most common multifamily prototypes found in suburban communities." (p. 209)

"By simply cutting down on interior square footage, many of the goals of building sustainable communities can be achieved." (p. 242)

"For example, a 1500 sq. ft house on a quarter acre lot near public transportation and services is going to be greener, in terms of lifecycle impact, than a 5000 sq. ft house in a remote, large lot location several miles from the nearest services." (p. 234)

"In a sense, there seems to be a universal interest in moderate density living." (p. 251)

"This idea makes total sense for increasing our affordable housing stock." (p. 252)

"By definition, a suburb cannot exist without a city that it grew from." (p. 253)

Open Questions

Does the design-practice register validate or refute the critics? Wentling's own audit confirms the segregation, sameness and car-domination that critics (Dovey's caricature, Keil's density myths) attack — yet he locates the cause in regulation, appraisal and cost machinery rather than in the form itself. Which causal account does the wiki adopt where they conflict?
Is the "reordering" compatible with the "telling people how to change" prohibition? Keil (2015) insists "It is time to change our view of the suburbs without telling the suburbanites how to change" (p. 589); Wentling's book is a manual for exactly that telling — from setbacks to color philosophy. Is a designer's reordering programme compatible with post-suburban political neutrality, or does the New Urbanism inherit the paternalism Røe found in the Norwegian plan's "great expectations"?
Can 4–8 units/acre "reordering" survive the affordability collapse Wentling himself documents? By his own conclusion, regulation has priced new suburban product "beyond the reach of entry-level buyers" (p. 252) — does Missing Middle legalization solve supply, or merely reprice it?
The universal-preference claim: Wentling cites Turner for the universality of detached-dwelling preference (p. 18) — how does this square with the cluster's evidence of dense-lav, cooperative and multifamily attachments (Røe) and with his own retirement/empty-nester market for attached housing (p. 199)?
Whose charm is the "layering of details"? The occupant-finishes-the-house thesis (p. 165) naturalizes a division of labour the postwar builder created by stripping built-ins — is charm here a design achievement or the residue of withheld investment?